In his first on-camera remarks about the stalemate in the Senate, Trump said it “will be a lot easier” to allow ObamaCare to falter on its own.

“I think we’re probably in that position where we’ll let ObamaCare fail,” he told reporters in the Roosevelt Room. “We’re not going to own it. I’m not going to own it. I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it. We’ll let ObamaCare fail and then the Democrats are going to come to us.”

Trump said Tuesday the key to advancing his priorities was expanding the GOP’s 52-seat majority in the Senate.

“We’re going to have to go out and get more Republicans elected in ’18,” he said. “I’ll be working very hard for that to happen. It would be nice to get Democrat support but really they are obstructionists. They have no ideas.”

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99 thoughts on “Trump’s Useless Proclamation Plus a New Definition of “Always””

It seems rather unfair to blame Donny for trying to get congress to take some positive action, but when THEY failed HIM, Donny went to Plan B. We may agree his Plan B should have been his Plan A, but the congressional leaders probably would not have gone along, until they finally gave up. Trying to get all repubs on the same page has always been like herding cats.

I think he ought to start focusing on tax cuts and the wall. He could start a lottery for the wall payment. Can you imagine how fast the jackpot would rise in a national lottery, and how much money would be raised?

Trump also should primary these losers (push his own candidate in each party) in the upcoming election-or, if we get disgusted enough, we could start recalling our lazy reps. The only think they seem to be good for is giving themselves pay raises and perks.

E X C E L L E N T Lottery for the wall. 1/2 to the wall and 1/2 to the winners(s)……

I’ve said the same about funding the Space Program. Sell $5 tickets for the first ride into Space to the Space Station. Allow the winner to use – or sell – his ticket to anyone. There are people who will (already have paid the Russians) tens or hundreds of millions to go in Space.

Ha ha ha. They can’t focus on tax cuts because they need to get the money from somewhere to pay for the tax cuts and that “somewhere” was supposed to be by disenfranchising 22 million people from their healthcare plans and then using the money the government WOULD have spent for healthcare for mainly poorer citizens to fund the tax cuts you and your ilk get wet dreams over. Sheeze.

And unless you were a multi-millionaire, the tax cuts the average person would be getting were something like $200-$500/year. Gee….

Joe, I’ve thought about it and you’re right. We actually need a tax increase and it needs to be directed at the millions of freelloaders who pay nothing at all.

Romney estimated it at 47% of voters, but in any event it is unsustainable for so many to be contributing nothing. We need to make net contributors out of them, preferably by ways of gainful employment, but either way the rhetoric around “tax cuts” needs some fresh air.

Most of the people NOT paying tax do so because they only make a very small amount of money or they have enough deductions to offset any tax they do owe. They take advantage of the tax system, just like the multi-millionaires do.

In addition to those that don’t pay taxes, there are many, many more that receiver more from governments than they pay back. That would include all government employees, for example, and those working for businesses that do government contract work.When you add it all up, a sizable majority of people majority or people are dependent on government, and thus have a vested interest in it continuing to grow.

Anyone who believes that government will shrink, or that taxes will go down on those that do actually work in the private sector and pay taxes, is going to be disappointed. That is why the system will ultimately collapse, as the burden gets heavier and heavier. Government employees (or contract workers) will argue “we pay taxes, too!”, but since ultimately they can not be paid without money from the private sector, that is irrelevant. If you eliminated their taxes, and reduced their pay by the same amount, you have a system that is financially identical, but it is more clear that the are dependent on the private sector.

Some people voted for Trump because he would bring back Leadership to the White House after that despicable Obama never got anything done, and because, as a man of action and a dealmaker par excellance, he’d be able to get most of his agenda passed easily.

Donny has been getting a lot done, you just didn’t read about it in WaPo or see it on CNN, respond2you. Start with checking out the number of illegals coming in now, and Donny hasn’t even started building a wall yet. The people working for the Border Patrol love Donny.

I thought they voted for him because he promised them a lot of impossible stuff, just like every other politician. Better health care for less money, lower taxes and more services, jobs that disappeared 40 years ago, a wall that another country would pay for, Etc. Etc. Etc. Sorry, but I don’t think he will be any more effective than any other politician. In fact he seems more corrupt than most as he seems blatantly iintent on making sure his family makes a lot of money while he is president.

Personally, I always felt the wall was electoral BS. I really can’t say for sure, but I think a lot of people voted for Trump because “Never Hillary”. The thing I like most about Trump is everyone in Washington DC hates him. Realistically (if you’ll excuse me), if all we get is guaranteed gridlock, it’s still a win over what a DC insider (which covers everyone else who ran) would have given us. I would have preferred Rand Paul, myself; but I doubt he would have gotten much passed either.

There is no fix. The old way was fine for me the premiums were affordable but many working poor could not afford to pay for insurance. Obamacare covered these people under Medicaid at the expense of everyone else ie soaring premiums and deductibles. The free market failed prior to Obamacare and this clusterfuck is unfixable. The only solution is to somehow keep the Medicaid expansion for the working poor in place and repeal the law that screws everyone else. . This will never happen, The republicans will lose seats trying to fix it. BTW a study just came out yesterday showing the USA ranked dead last in healthcare of all the industrialized nations and we are only paying 60% higher costs per capita than the rest of the industrialized world. Really getting good value for the money.

America will eventually get to a single payer system like the rest of the developed world, but not until they try every stupid idea they can come up with in the meantime. I predict it will take around 30 years, and while they screw around, costs will rise to 20% of GDP, and the % of people covered will drop to 50%.

How do you know what you pay? It is heavily government subsidized, and from what I read, most socialist style governments are in a world or financial hurt….so much so that they must import foreign invaders to bolster their workforce to sustain that fake accounting.
We are arguing over idealized economic systems that are fictional, have existed for time periods that are shorter than most of their long term bond debt. The only system we know that is sustainable is a natural and un-stimulated one, as nature always persists, it’s just not always pretty. Remember watching Natural Geographic?
I nature we are constantly intervening, protecting this species while disposing of others only to find massive population imbalance that require solutions more murderous than nature had ever conceived. We prevent logging to see massive buildup in dead timber and brush that provide fuel for devastating fires. And we are doing the same with every other aspect of our world, and the best they can do is go bonkers over climate change, when we KNOW the really BIG problem is GOVERNMENT. For many of us deniers, while we are concerned over the damage to our economy that some of these “scientists” would inflict us with, the larger concern is what other real things they might do to our climate, our environment, if given full reign. I recall when the “coming ice age” was all the rage and scientists were proposing dumping carbon dust on glaciers and snow fields to instigate ice melt. And worse still, we have NO IDEA what they may actually be doing right now, given the history we know just of the last hundred years. He horrors and disaster put upon us by GOVERNMENTS have no comparison in the natural world.

LOL I always stated the Republicans are spineless and eventually this will all lead to a single payer system. Many complain about Obamacare and yet it is those that get taxpayer funded medical care.

Many insurance companies are pulling out of the current plan including many in CA and Washington State. Several counties announced their people will now be placed in the high risk insurance programs and they were crying foul, demonstrating big time!

Like I have said in the past the Republicans need to let the full implementation of Obamacare go ahead full steam and then the real crying will begin as insurance plans will become taxable income for many of its supporters. Trump was indeed trying to do something and we cannot blame him for this mess, point the fingers at Congress where the blame belongs.

You just gotta laugh when the Democrats complain the repubs will not work with them to fix healthcare and yet they jammed this bill down our throats without one repub voting for it. At least the Dems had the balls to do something.

I agree. The US will eventually get to a single payer system. What government broke can only be fixed by more government. The reluctance to go to that system is that it will damage two healthy sectors of the US economy, the medical research sector, and the plaintiff’s bar. Medical advances in the last fifty years have been dramatic, primarily because the system we have in place is based on the fundamental belief that everyone is entitled to the best possible care. If a new medical device is invented, and it’s better than the state of the art, it is immediately adopted, regardless of cost, because to do otherwise would result in malpractice. Thus, medical research can be funded, since if you develop something better, you can always end up with a profit.

With a single payer system, that will all crash down. A new medical device will not automatically be adopted. It will only be adopted if the government deems that the price is right. Research will continue, but at a much, much lower pace . This will be true not only in the US, but overseas as well. A new medical invention in England can still be profitably sold in the US, and then sold for less overseas. Without the US to provide the profit, research budgets everywhere will be slashed.

The plaintiff bar will also lose a lucrative sector. With a single payer system, malpractice suits will be much harder. The governmental red tape will dictate what care a person gets, and that will protect doctors from liability for bad outcomes.

I’m not saying that this is good, or bad; only that a dramatic reduction in medical research worldwide is an inevitable result of the US adopting a single payer system.

Because ACA funneled most of the money through these hospitals driving smaller doctor groups and independents under their roof. Hospital construction has been going mad while more and more hospitals merge together. Everything today is about scale….Too Big Too Fail.

@hmk – I’ve gotten very suspicious of numbers such “studies” come up with.

Problems:

1) Comparisons of the quality of health care “systems” tend to spend a lot of time on weird, nineteen century metrics. E.g. Lifespan – a mushy, calculated number that relies on both speculation and equivalence of data going back 80 years – all yielding a number showing differences between countries explainable by circumstance and normal noise. But, hey, we can find a few of such numbers to support the conclusion we’re pushing.

2) Cost numbers necessarily come from bogus sources. On the one hand, ask a bureaucrat how well he’s doing. “Fox, how’s the hen house?” On the other hand, look at US medical bills. (Even the half-price, we-paid-this-much “costs” your insurance bill shows may be bogus. Apparently, insurance companies can get kick-backs from those they pay.)

3) Given the murkiness of such numbers, seeing them repeated so often makes one wonder whether they are true by repetition rather than fact.

4) These numbers almost always come with a following “we must have a Canada/UK/Aus/NZ system.” Well, at least we’re talking English-speaking. Many U.S. discussions about “health care” (D.C-speak for “health insurance”) forget the U.S. already has a single payer system. It’s called Medicare/Medicaid and it dominates health care spending and practice. For the left-overs (where 90% of anecdotes and FUD come from), the rest of the “system” simply copies the “practice/care” and prices set by M/M.

Allow Medic(aid|are) to split the cost difference of a cheaper therapy outside the US between the patient and the Medic(aid|are) program. You go to Timbuktu for a $900 operation instead of doing it at the Medicare rate of $3000 in the US, and you get a $1050 kick-back, say. Medicare pays $900 to the Sahara clinic plus $1050 to you, saving $1050 out of their budget. You cover the trip expenses.

That sort of thing.

Fraud? In the modern world it’s not hard to think of ways to deal with fraud.

Working poor.
We have had medicaid for many years now, so “the poor” have always had some access to healthcare….beyond spontaneous emergency room visits. And we have had charity hospitals far longer, but…
With ACA we now see medicaid covering people with 400% of poverty level income, and republicans are haters who want people to die because they want to cut it back to 350%. Bastards!

The poor in America had “access to healthcare” long before the Europeans got here. You don’t need some government program, nor a sea of tax feeding leeches, for that. Nor for anything else.

Contrary to what the drones have been indoctrinated to mindlessly regurgitate with great, conviction; each individual good that combines to comprise what’s called “health care,” are perfectly normal economic goods. No different from tennis socks. All goods are.

None are “special,” requiring some junta to ban people from freely contracting for them, rob people left and right in the name of some blind faith in…..eh, what exactly???, While lording it over people, dictating how whom can purchase what from whom, and whom he has to pay what.

Viewed as an aggregate, “health care” in it’s entirety does look tremendously complex. But noone wakes up in the morning feeling bad, and needing “health care”, any more than some dude running low on gas, needs “the oil sector.”

Rather, he needs one, or a few, distinct services performed. Services that will, as always, be provided as efficiently as currently possible, if people are allowed to contract for them freely, as they see fit, without intervention.

In general, none of the aggregates that comprise the progressive canon, have any real relevance at all. Not “Health Care”, not “Financial System”, not GDP, not even “We” nor “Society” nor “America.” All the focus on those, are just there to give the impression of some incomprehensible complexity and enormity, in order to make people feel like they need protection from some government, since these “systems” are “obviously too big” for anyone to deal with on their own. IOW, they are all nothing more than yet other examples of Mencken’s imaginary hobgoblins.

In the real world, where people live, everything is just individual transactions between individual people. For fairly specific goods and services. And the fewer restrictions are put in place on those individual interactions, the better and more efficiently people are served.

Huh? That could have been summarized into a couple of sentences for people like me who have a short attention span. In theory you may be correct. In regards to theory: it is when you understand everything but nothing works. In practice everything works but no one knows why. In heathcare there is a fusion of practice and theory. Nothing works and no one know why.
I suggest people read the book “The healing of America” by TR Reid. Its a great summary of healthcare in the USA and the rest of the world.

obama set the standard for incompetence in high office,it now looks like trump is tryin to meet or even exceed that level of ineptitude.why?Is it that he just doesn’t have a clue WTH he’s doin?barry never held a real job before becoming CINC,so it was of no surprise his presidency was a pathetic joke,trump at least has some real world experience,he better start using some of it,like quick

well, he was for it imploding .. before repealing it … before letting it implode (again) … or, er, something like that …

March:

“The best thing we can do, politically speaking, is let Obamacare explode,” the president continued. “Bad things are going to happen to Obamacare. There’s not much you can do to help it.

“It’s not a question of, ‘gee, I hope it does well.’ I would love it to do well. I want great healthcare for the people of this nation. But it can’t do well. It’s imploding and will soon explode. And it’s not going to be pretty.”

Unfortunately, Schumer and the Dems will blame the Rep’s for the failure: “Didn’t give it enuff $$$:. “Cut Medicare for the poor”. “Caused it to fail because they didn’t like OBAMA!” Whatever the dem’s come up with will be thriwn at the Rep’s in 2018. They will shift the blame. That is ALL they know….and it will work for the stoooopid voters….

Because the next election in 2018 will be “We, the Dem;s will FIX this busted health care – unlike the greedy, uncaring, cold-hearted Rep’s”

They already are blaming Trump. Only a deluded fool believes progressives will EVER be held to account for their actions and policies as long as they own MSM.
Everything is about perception and they devote everything in that cause, no insanity is too much as they know that their media will sell it. They will make the most extreme and ridiculous assertions knowing that it will only push their”Overton window” of perception further in their direction.
Good cannot win against evil….not on this planet, only in an Afterlife (where anything is possible). Those that will lie cheat and steal cannot be defeated by compassion and forgiveness….taking the high road. To win against them you must become them. Ultimately a loss by any moral standard, standards that THEY create to inhibit us from doing what is needed to succeed.

Talk about “useless proclamations”!
Making a point about politicians being duplicitous in their rhetoric is about as useless a proclamation as can be made.
And to be fair in regard to Trump’s statements about the ACA, he has been all over the map with ideas and approaches in some attempt, ANY attempt to fullfil his promises.
I would much rather see hypocrisy in rhetoric in the pursuit of an understood agenda than a purity of message that is in complete denial of true agendas.
Obama and many democrats swore the ACA was not about single payer government run insurance when we ALL knew it was. It was designed to fail leaving only single payer as the viable answer….as we see daily now, given the massive expansion of Medicaid under the ACA that is now the left’s panacea….Medicaid for ALL, single payer government run, and funded.
The most annoying aspect in all of this is the denial in the face of transparency.
ACA was a claimed response to a healthcare crisis that has now morphed into a much more real and present crisis. The question is, what will our next crisis look like and what will be their solutions then? Death panels, assisted suicide for the underperforming, millions of I’ll people being frozen while waiting for the next economic recovery that will fund their “cures”?

There is no time like the present to start promoting what the “replacement” plan bullet points should be. If the replacement plan is a good plan, it might be possible to drum up sufficient public support such that the Congress will be more inclined to approve it by the time they get around to voting. For what it’s worth, I would like to see the “insurance” and “social welfare” aspects of US healthcare separated into two baskets so that people cannot hide under the “insurance” label when what they are really talking about is “social welfare.”

Meanwhile, the Executive Branch could make a really positive difference on its own by pursuing enforcement of antitrust laws already on the books. No more restriction of trade to protect drug monopolies. No more secret pricing for medical care. No more disparate charges to different customers for the same service. Give everyone fair warning that this is coming, start the clock (90 days? – bureaucrats seem to like that number), and then enforce the existing law, yes?

The debate (if progressives would ever allow such a thing) is over whether healthcare is a right.
Conservatives are castigated as heartless to suggest it is not, regardless of the fact that it has NEVER BEEN.
This is NOT a debate as there are few Republicans that will remove this “right”. They simply argue over semantics and how to fund the “entitlement” without their voter base recognizing that it comes directly from their pockets.
There is only MOAR, not less, and for conservatives to hope for a return to financial sanity is as deluded as anything a progressive could dream up. Society is already addicted to all forms of entitlement and will never voluntarily go cold turkey or even consider cutting back beyond superficial New year’s Eve proclamations that go no where.

I don’t see any reason for a debate. Health care is not a right. It is a basic human need, like food, and shelter. Nations, like individuals, should focus on basic human needs first, before worrying about wants. If US governments could quit trying to satisfy so many ridiculous wants (like all electric car subsidies, building stupid walls, etc etc) perhaps they could actually get their act together on providing decent health care for the entire country.

The government can PROVIDE NOTHING that it does not TAKE from it’s people.
This whole notion makes me SICK. When we are entitled simply because we VOTE, to the wealth and property of others, no one will have anything.
The whole concept of entitlement is what is destroying the economic and moral society. The fact that when people have insurance that they suddenly could care less about it’s cost and only demand the very best, points to the fatal flaw. Government’s answer is to dominate the entire system, there by ensuring that there is no choice….like with the VA system, so all you end up with is rationing for everyone.

Not by my word, but by the Supreme Court declaring as such. Let’s do away with semantics and address it as part of tax reform which is what it is. You “repeal Obamacare” and you may take a bow for doing away with the largest tax in history.

Exactly – enforce anti-trust – eliminate fraudulent pricing – apply free market competition to drugs. Why hasn’t this received any attention. All these ideas could have been implemented over the past seven years with out any action at all on the ACA.

Then maybe I wouldn’t face being locked out of the healthcare system due to massive inflation when congress refuses to act on fixing ACA. When Obamacare fails I am sure that my premiums and medical fees will not go back to where they were before.

My Senator has written me recently and will get right on to working my concerns about high healthcare costs. I am beyond disgusted as they have been implying they had a solution for seven years. The last solution up for vote just shifted still more bloated healthcare costs onto me and off of the government allowing them to waste more money on their own projects and handouts.

I have been a Trump supporter but I do not support his flip flopping on re-invading Afghanistan, AHA repeal, the fake now his “great” stock market bubble, and flooding the place with Ex Goldman thieves. He is starting to remind me of Barrack Obama who lied every time his lips moved.

He is starting to behave just like the politician the public did not want.

So geniuses, if the ACA/Obamacare is allowed to “fail”, what happens to the 22 million (or is it 25 million) who lose their current health insurance. Do they head back to the emergency rooms for basic healthcare?

Why isn’t this question being discussed on the fake news stations? Why isn’t it being discussed by anyone here?

The old white men here are always content with pissing and moaning about everything. Of course they are all on Medicare which makes it easy for them to complain about socialized medicine. Hypocrites through and through.

There are now about 75 million millenials. This is roughly equal to the number of boomers. The political center of gravity of the country is shifting. Millenials don’t care much about health care. They care about forgiveness of student debt. Bernie Sanders struck this chord and threatened to overtake Hillary. Whichever party figures this out and offers student debt forgiveness will gain many seats. Health care is a side show compared to crushing private debt. Our leadership is tone deaf about these issues.

But, of course, the free shit army will prevail,,,,then the entire dog and pony show will one day come crashing down. I can see them now, all lined up sitting on the curb with their empty hands out. Might be wise to look at the collapse of the old USSR for guidance regarding surviving that likely future scenario.

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.” Elmer T. Peterson

Health care is a basic human need. Retirement is a want, not a need. Raise the retirement age and use the social security savings to start a single player system like all other developed countries. I open the floor to debate.

Yes, Realist. And I will voluntarily delay my Age 65 Social to later (70?) IF, and ONLY IF, all the welfare cheats and welfare GENERATIONS and Disability cheats and Social Security Child/Widow Care cheats are thrown OFF the programs. We have SO many of THAT going on – and needs to be cleaned up…then there would be plenty of $$$ for those really needy.

When I read about the woman getting several welfare/social security/disability checks and I am SURE that is going on. THAT woman should get jail time – so she DOES get her free meals and free housing. Yes, it would costus ? #$45,000 a year to jail her – we’d STIL be ahead….

OH….and YES, lets MEANS TEST Social Security. Anyone think Bill Gates should be receiving it – or Warren? Really? Now, I know they’ve ‘earned’ it and paid into it…..but really? Pick a big number – and means test them out of it. $35K a year means NOTHING to those guys…..and would mean something to the rest of America. “The rich DO pay more”….

If you “means test” SSI, then stop calling it anything but WELFARE. Stop the damned lie of sending out statements every year showing your “contributions” and potential payout.
Reform the entire damned thing. Eliminate income, employment and property tax and use ONLY a sales tax that EVERY PERSON pays, regardless of income, and use that money to provide ALL public services, defense, entitlements….everything. Let us know what we are paying rather than constantly hiding taxes inside the cost of everything we consume. Lets TRY a little honesty, transparency and just SEE what we are truly made of, rather than relying on lies, deception and THEFT, to sustain this mess.
I DARE THEM. After generations of lying SOBs claiming to be the fount of truth and morality, lets just SEE what can be done with that theme. Sales tax is the ONLY fair tax as it is 100% transparent, a line item tax on every purchase receipt. It can be made progressive by making certain basic needs exempt. We have no idea what percentage of our labors and assets are taxed given the insane complexity and taxation on the producers of everything we consume. For this reason I reject the VAT as it is the worst of all of it. Consumers in those countries that use VAT have no idea what part of the cost of their goods is actually tax. iT can be calculated and derive if willing to try, but it is purposely done to conceal the true costs, just as withholding taxes are on American workers.
The LIE of taxation is the same as the LIE of health insurance….that regardless of how high the costs, we are receiving even more in benefits…..the ONLY reason we submit to it. If taxation and health insurance only paid out what we actually put in, NOBODY would tolerate it.
It’s ALWAYS about something for nothing. And it seldom pays out that way.

I do personally believe that health care is a need and retirement is a want. I also believe that one of the problems with government is they try to be all things to all people, in order to get their votes. If government could just focus on basic needs first, and only worry about basic wants when they can afford it. I find it unbelievable that America can’t provide a decent health care system when so many countries can.

The debate is the preference or value of liberty over benefit.
The coupe chicken versus the free range bird.
Everyone has an opinion, but the difference is that those who seek liberty over benefit or convenience are only requesting to keep what they have earned, whereas those seeking convenience in lieu of liberty want these benefits and convenience at a cost to those who want liberty. Those seeking convenience can only have it by FORCING others to pay for it. Government provided healthcare necessitates EVERYONE pay into it…the entire premise of ACA, as they desperately need other people’s money….the people who do not need nor want healthcare. Collectivism demands FORCE as other than in very small cohesive groups, never works voluntarily, and as realist tells us, it becomes necessary to prohibit activities that challenge that system.
So, we are left with freedom or force, and force requires someone to DECIDE. YOU?

Progressives believe in force….they DEMAND IT, as we see with Trump, they insist that their agenda is supreme to the democratic process. When they hold the majority, they insist elections have consequences, and when they don’t, they demand “minority rights status” that says that as a minority, their voice must be heard and respected. The love force which is WHY it is so damned important that they have THEIR people in those positions of power. The force they crave is also the force they fear, which makes it more than apparent that they have no interest in democracy beyond what it can provide in POWER…..FORCE.

No they can’t. But if there were a single payer system and it was financed by a national sales tax as in Canada, you could tax crappy food like chips, pop etc at a higher rate. Also could give a tax rebate to those who don’t smoke, keep a healthy BMI, etc. That way the people who abuse themselves and the system will be paying more.

Well hmk, we used to have a system that rewarded those who lived healthy ECONOMIC lives, living frugally, saving for their future, for their retirement, for the inevitable crisis of health or employment. That is not our theme anymore. Now our responsibility is to spend, not save. Consume not conserve. To live completely dependent not upon ourselves, our skills, our minds, but on government, on officials who will decide what is in our best interests. The game is to stay alive….but not live. To last as long as possible to consume, to borrow and spend.
Humanity has lived on this planet for a very many generations and it was never about quantity, it was about quality. It wasn’t about consumption, it was about accomplishment, about fierce independence and ingenuity, not about submitting to a collective in the pretense that our voice matters, unless it disagrees with the desired consensus. What humanity historically valued seems to have suddenly changed. Who and what will be our heroes in the future? Musk? Bezos? Obama? Alexa? Google?

The problem is government cannot provide anything without first taking it from someone else. It is idealistic drivel to ignore that.

Why not direct government to provide food, clothing, housing and medical care to everyone who needs it such that all can live comfortably regardless of their effort? I know of a couple who work the US system exactly toward that end and yet they also go gambling at a local casino despite their limited income. When asked why they discard their money like that, their answer is “everyone needs some entertainment.”

Absolutely true. Government must collect money in order to provide services. The question is often; what services should government provide and how much should we pay for those services? I do not have an exhaustive list of necessary govt. services, but in my mind, a few of them would be:

Government itself
Defense or military, and police
Health Care
Highways and roads
Education (up to perhaps 18 or 20 yrs of age)
Some utilities

Hey Mad. I’m not sure what you want; is it no government at all? Anarchy? Chaos? Darwinism? What exactly do you mean by liberty over benefit? Freedom or Force? Collectivism? Progressive? You’re the buzzword king.
You sound like you’re mad at anyone who suggests working together.
Do you think that health care should all be private, with no government involvement at all. No government regulations. All doctors and hospitals etc, should be self regulating? Buyer beware.
What’s your position on health care?

The rule of government is NOT to redistribute. It is to set basic rules of commerce and behavior…simple rules, rules that a significant majority of our citizens agree with, rules that do not require a $500/hr lawyer to understand, or years of court adjudication to interpret. Not a parent or guardian who makes decisions for us, decisions that THEY believe are in our best interest (and against the public’s preferences) while coincidentally vastly increasing THEIR wealth and power.
There is no person, not even the most progressive left wing idiot out there, who can honestly suggest that what we have today in any way resembles what our founders intended. The best they can do is suggest our constitution is a “living document” which implies it is meaningless, given we know the founder’s intent based on voluminous writings of the time documenting their beliefs. Instead what our liberal interpreters of today are suggesting is not true intent of the founders but what they believe THEIR intent wold be if writing those words.
We have a lawless government that drowns us in laws that no one can adequately define. We can’t even say who is a legal resident, who has rights to come into our country, as EVERYTHING is left to constant redefinition.
What I want is a LEGAL CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT that follows the rule of law, and nation of laws, not of men. All of the contrived “rights”we now endow ourselves with are NOT constitutional and everyone knows it, but because they have not been struck down, now have precedence and are considered lawful. Rather than amending our constitution as was intended, we have simply ignored it. Our federal government has usurped our federalist constitutional government that reserves all powers not enumerated in our constitution as powers of the federal government to the state by simply using the power of printed money and limitless federal debt. States are now completely dependent upon federal money to survive. The federal government is funding local police departments, state national guards, schools, every road project, Medicaid and just about every other device formerly in control exclusively to state governments.
I don’t want anarchy, or anything like it, I simply want MY government BACK.

Realist, I think you may have missed my point. Need is highly subjective depending on who is doing the measuring. To the extent government provides services to the public there is a high propensity for waste, abuse, and misuse, so such services must be kept to an absolute minimum (enough to keep society functional, no more).

Funny you mention education up to 18-20 years as an example of necessary government service. The US has been achieving very poor educational results lately despite having an expensive public system relative to other countries. There is also a conflict of interest. When government does the educating, it tends to educate students to support big government. Although I was not around at the time, I wonder if the old community schoolhouse model wasn’t better.

Thanks for the response Mad. It gives me a better idea of your point of view. However, I’m still not certain if you believe the US government should pay for a military or police force, or a legal system through taxation. If they don’t, how else could they enforce the rules and regulations that you want them to establish.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but I get the impression that you desire to live in a time when the world was a much more simple place (like when we were much younger than we are today). Many people long for that simple world, with simple solutions to simple problems. However, I tend to think the world is a complex place, with complex problems, and no easy solutions. That’s the “Reality” as I see it. That’s why politicians tell voters they have the simple solution to problem x, and if they get elected, the problem will be solved in short order. Then they get elected and can’t solve the problem because it’s way more complex than they thought. And the voters get mad because they were “promised” a simple solution.

Cautious, sorry if I misunderstood your post. Needs are indeed subjective to a degree. And I agree that services provided by government can be wasteful. However, I believe that in some areas, that government can indeed provide the most cost effective solution, contrary to popular belief. For example, many governments have well run health care systems that cost roughly 10-11% of GDP, compared to 17% in the US. Similarly, many governments provide well run national pension systems with management costs around 0.2% compared to an individual managing their own pension for 2%fees or more.

In the minds of too many it’s not until that fact is much more obvious to more people enrolled in it.

Of course, since the Reps have now been stupid enough to even TOUCH the program, its eventual total failure will be blamed on them. Of course, with a left-wing media, there would have been no good outcome for them even if they hadn’t touched it for they would then be blamed for not even trying to fix it.

They were always going to be blamed…GUILTY of the healthcare failure, just as Trump was always a Russian “Manchurian candidate”…..the progressive media told us so, and who are WE to argue?
The blame, the proof, the facts of every disaster are determined by a consensus as measured by the media and CREATED by the media. How many hurricanes was BUSH responsible for?
Today GUILT or even crime is not a matter of law, proof, facts or ANYTHING except a consensus of INTENT. Trump is guilty, not of breaking a law but of INTENT…regardless of fact or truth…..we simply know he is up to no good…a bad guy, and all based upon a public BELIEF based upon nothing but conjecture repeated endlessly until they can run a poll that suggests that a majority of “people” “believe” he is guilty. That is their law…. the court of public OPINION, opinion that they alone create, percolate daily, reinforcing with new innuendo that is largely invented.
And it works in their favor as well, as we saw with Hillary. Comey publicly made the case AGAINST Hillary, explaining how she clearly broke the law regarding the handling of sensitive government documents, and then in summation proclaimed that NO prosecutor would indict her because of what?…..No INTENT, something that plainly had no standing in law. The media only pointed out that she confirmed she did NOT wipe her server with a cloth….only bleachbit and hammers, but NO INTENT.
Waiting around for the media to back off of conservatives and especially Trump is a fool’s errand.
What Trump has shown us is that the ONLY path forward against them is to be IN THEIR FACE. Lots of people,left and right, don’t like this at all. The left because they simply detest him and the right because they still think that keeping to the high road, to “principles” will prevail without recognizing that many of those principles were put there as a deliberate barrier to our own defense. But what we have seen is the media going berserk, and instead of displaying Trump’s dirty laundry, are showing the world their own. And you can bet they will continue to generate polls and protest groups demonstrating Trump’s failures, and we are fully expected to believe and accept them as fact…..the building of false consensus. In their calculations all that is needed is to continue the beatings until moral improves. I think they will be proven WRONG.

There are no simple solutions to complex problems. That, in itself, is a problem. People think there are simple solutions to complex problems and are shocked when those who promise them, don’t deliver them.

I point my finger at an entire political system that rewards politicians who promise simple solutions to complex problems and to an electorate that falls for that snake oil. Your electorate does not appear to be “reasonable observers” if they believe the bs that Trump was talking.

We didn’t vote for Trump believing he would successfully implement all his desired policies. We knew we wouldn’t elect him as our King. We knew that Congress would have to take them up and pass them.

We supported Trump’s favored policies – that’s the reason we elected him. He wasn’t talking bs. That’s only how YOU interpreted it. Trump promoted a realistic general direction moving forward which proved popular with the electorate. He wanted to flush failed Obamacare and replace it with something else. Not a difficult concept to understand. But he can’t do it alone. The actual plan has to be formulated and approved in Congress. Trump didn’t fail. Congress failed. A reasonable observer could comprehend that.

Mish – a correction on your comment “always”, whereby you implied Trump had never talked about letting Obamacare fail. I followed Trump’s speeches avidly while he was running and he clearly and emphatically stated that Obamacare was a failure and the Republicans should more or less stand aside and let it happen.

People realize we are moving toward a single provider system like the UK or Canada. Why, because democrats want it and Republicans know the present system is unaffordable with Medicaid and Medicare exploding. A single payer system is just an additional tax on everyone which is something politicians alway support.

What do you want Seen? Are you in favor of single payer, or do you have a better alternative?

Personally, I am very happy with a single payer system in my country because it is very efficient. I realize that my taxes pay for it, and as I make a good income, I pay a lot of tax. But I don’t mind, because I consider it the best way to deliver health care to everyone. When I compare paying less than 11% of GDP vs the US 17+% it seems pretty reasonable to me. I find it sad that a developed country like America can’t provide reasonable health care for all its citizens.

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